STORY ARCHIVE

Professor Liz Harry won the Eureka prize for scientific research in 2002 for her work on bacterial division. Dr Paul Willis caught with his old friend to find out how her work on developing new antibiotics is going.

Associate Professor Liz Harry

TRANSCRIPT

Dr Paul WillisGood evening and welcome to the Eureka prizes 2002...This is the Oscars of Australian science.

NarrationBack in 2002 Associate Professor Liz Harry won her Eureka Prize for the research she’d been doing on how bacteria divide.

Dr Paul WillisThat was when she was at the University of Sydney. She’s now here at the University of Technology Sydney So let’s go and find out what she’s been up to for the last seven years.

NARRATIONAnd discover how winning the Eureka Prize has contributed to her success.

Assoc. Prof Elizabeth HarryThe Eureka prize for me has opened up a whole lot of opportunities in my career from basically getting me a job at UTS. and it gave me the confidence to move forward with a problem that I thought was worth solving and that I thought I had some of the answers.

Dr Paul WillisWhat is it about bacteria that fascinates you?

Assoc. Prof Elizabeth HarryBacteria are capable of dividing and doubling their cell number in something like ten minutes, so they can grow really quickly and multiply really quickly, they can grow anywhere. From the mud bubble of Rotorua to the Antarctic between ice layers. That’s what I love. My research is always focused on how bacterial cells multiply and how they regulate that process, now we’re moving into working with bacteria that are the nasty ones, the one’s that cause disease in hospitals that are antibody resistant.

Narration It’s been known for some time that DNA replication and cell division in bacteria are intimately linked , but the nature of this coupling was completely unknown... until now.

Assoc. Prof Elizabeth HarrySo what we’re looking at here Paul is just a single bacterial cell. It divides in the centre and the first stage of cell division is when this green thing which is a protein goes to that site and it regulates when and where division will occur. Since 2002 what we’ve done is partnered with industry with the view to developing new antibiotics that will hit and kill this process, thus killing the bacteria.

NARRATION… And Liz Harry’s research is one step closer to uncovering a way to stop cells multiplying and prevent infections from becoming fatal.

Assoc. Prof Elizabeth Harry “so you have a wound and you wash it and put this straight on…” The latest collaboration we’ve made is with a company that makes honey for treating wounds caused by infectious diseases so that’s been a very very interesting output that we have, that we can actually now address human health.

Assoc. Prof Elizabeth HarryThe Eureka prize is the most satisfying prize to win in science because it judges your science and the significance of that, and being able to share that with the public.